milos topic » WordPress

DIY Themes’ Thesis

Milos Topic — Thu, 07 May 2009 14:23:14 +0000

I finally found some time over the past week to do some research (it’s what I do ) on the best WordPress themes out there and DIY Themes’ Thesis seems to come out on top. I decided to go with it and after playing around their code “sandbox” for less than a day I absolutely love the possibilities and options it provides. Their major strength in addition to a well designed and optimized theme is their support forum where you can find answers to most (if not all) of your questions.

Let me know what you think or if you have any other themes you find professional, efficient and properly supported. In case you decide to give Thesis a try you should also follow them on Twitter for the first-hand info.

Post from: Milos Topic

DIY Themes’ Thesis

Designing a client friendly website We have all came across websites with a mass of...
It’s quiet out there On this morning of social networks outages where Facebook is...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

WordPress v.2.7.1 upgrade error

Milos Topic — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 20:22:37 +0000

Just finished upgrading this blog to WordPress v.2.7.1 and it all went ok, everything looked ok at first that is. On the front end (side seen by visitors) it all looks the same and all of the functionality is still there.
On the other hand, on the back end (admin side) not everything went as smoothly. After the upgrade on my first login I noticed that the dashboard is missing stuff.

At the same time in lower right hand corner under “Other WordPress News” I was getting the following error:

Dashboard would regain it’s original appearance (for a moment) only if I would disable all plugins or click on “Configure” under “Other WordPress News”, but would soon go back to non-functional. After “googling” around I quickly realized that this has been a problem since v.2.7 for some and found the answer on the WordPress Support Forum.

Solution

Click on “Configure” under “Other WordPress News” and change the default RSS feed to http://lorelle.wordpress.com/feed/

After making that change things went back to normal. Fairly strange and unexpected, but with help of shared knowledge there’s always a solution out there.

Post from: Milos Topic

WordPress v.2.7.1 upgrade error

Your knowledge is only useful if you share it Knowledge is a powerful thing, but its real power and...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

WordPress plugins

Milos Topic — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 21:07:43 +0000

As I look through the sea of WordPress plugins to test and potentially add to this blog in order make my life easier, generate more useful data and make it more interesting for visitors I’ve realized that this could turn into a fairly complicated process. Considering that the number of plugins keeps growing almost daily there are several things one should consider when selecting a plugin:

What are you trying to accomplish and how important is it to you

How reliable, properly tested and updated is a particular plugin

Is it compatible with your theme, design and layout

Available alternatives

Here are some of the plugins I use (alphabetical order):

Akismet – fights spam.

All in One SEO Pack – helps with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) of your blog/posts.

Bad Behavior – fights spam. Ideally as another layer of protection with Akismet.

cforms – Cool, fully customizable forms (Example: My contact form).

EasyIP2Country – identifies where commenting visitors are coming from.

FeedBurner FeedSmith – helps you track your RSS feed subscribers.

Google Analytics for WordPress – adds your Google Analytics tracking code (the new ga.js one!) to all pages within your blog.

Highlight Author Comments – displays comments made by a post’s author in a distinctive style with no need to edit your template files, etc.

RSS Footer – let’s you add an extra line of content to articles in your feed, defaulting to “Post from: ” and then a link back to your blog, with your blog’s name as it’s anchor text.

Sociable – adds social media buttons to your posts, and does so easily, and beautifully.

WordPress Database Backup – creates backups of your core WordPress tables as well as other tables of your choice in the same database.

WP-Polls – Adds an AJAX poll system to your WordPress blog.

The above listed plugins are in use now with another 5 or 6 currently in testing. You have seen my favorites, now it’s time for you share your favorite plugins.

How do you decide on a plugin, how do you determine that it is valuable to you? What are your favorite/must have plugins and why? Please share them and I will compile a list for everyone to see and will take a look at them myself.

Post from: Milos Topic

WordPress plugins

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.